Luis Felipe Ramón y Rivera
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| Luis Felipe Ramón y Rivera | |
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| Born | August 23, 1913 San Cristóbal, Táchira, Venezuela |
| Died | October 22, 1993 Caracas, Venezuela |
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[edit] Early life
Luis Felipe Ramón and Rivera. composer, teacher, violinist, folklorist and writer was born in San Cristóbal, Táchira, August 23, 1913. His first years he soon passed them in San Cristóbal, between 1919 and 1921, with his parents and brothers, successively in Cúcuta, San Luis and Pamplona (Colombia).
In 1925, being already in Caracas he enters the Academy of Music and Declamation. In 1926, been again in Colombia, specifically in Pamplona, Luis Felipe he initiates his learning of theory and solmization with the teacher of chapel Gerardo Rangel. In 1928 he was again transferred to Caracas reinitiating his formal studies in the Academy of Music and Declamation in where he was student of the teachers Vicente Emilio Sojo and Miguel Ángel Espinel. In 1934 he received the title of viola professor.
[edit] Career
By that time he enters in the Orfeón Lamas and the Venezuela Symphony orchestra. In 1938 begins an intense cultural work took root in San Cristóbal giving that to found others along with the Pro-Art Meeting (1939), whose orchestra directed; to being professor of the School of Arts and Oficios and of the Normal School of Teachers; and to create the Academy of Music of the Táchira (1942), institution that directed, like the choir created in the same one. In 1945 he obtained a scholarship of the Venezuelan government to continue his musical formation in Uruguay and Argentina. During two years he studied harmony and instrumentation for band with Vicente Ascone, in Montevideo, and musical folklore with Carlos Vega in Buenos Aires. In 1947, he returns to Venezuela, like head of the section of music of the Service of National Folkloric Investigations. He Returned to Buenos Aires and directed between 1948 and 1952, the American Orchestra. Again on Venezuela, he founded The National Typical Orchestra (1953), with the mission to rescue and to spread the folk music of the country. Between 1953 and 1973 he exerted the direction of the National Institute of Folklore.
[edit] Last years
In 1988 he founded with another specialists the Fundación Internacional de Etnomusicólogia y Folklore (FINIDEF), organism to which donated his patrimony. Like composer Ramon and Rivera, is the author of a series of musical pieces in which the traditional rates of the country predominate, specially the one of Venezuelan andes, like Brias of the Torbes, Distancia, Aires de verde montaña, among others. As folklorist his contribution along with the one of other investigators like Juan Liscano, Miguel Acosta Saignes, Rafael Olive Figueroa, Manuel Rodríguez Cárdenas, Isabel Aretz and others, to the study and diffusion of the manifestations of the Venezuelan popular culture.
In honor to Ramón y Rivera the government of the Táchira state founded, the fonoteca that takes his name and that is assigned to the Public Library Leonardo Ruiz Pineda, and he files regional of folklore, created during the management of the lawyer Alfonso Rojas Cáceres, like Director of Culture and Arts, that he designated for such responsibility, to a student of the composer and director, the anthropologist Maria of the Sea Laynez. Wine in several occasions to the Táchira and lead to the Official Band of Concerts. The work (while still alive) of the teacher Luis Felipe Ramon and Rivera finalizes the October 22, 1993 when he dies in Caracas.
In company of his wife, Isabel Aretz, Luis Felipe Ramon and Rivera dedicated many years of his life to investigate the Venezuelan popular traditions. His unshakeable fight to defend the cultural values of the country took him to establish numerous conclusions relative to the creation of the folk music of Venezuela, wisdom that he shaped in more than 20 books and innumerable articles.
